1968 has been called the most turbulent year of the 1960s. Describe what happened that year and why it was so turbulent. Include at least three...

Much came to a head in 1968. A baby boom after World War II fueled a 1960s youth movement.  Anti-war fervor on college campuses reached a fever pitch in 1968 as college students reacted to the Tet offensive and increasingly protested the Vietnam war. On February 27, trusted news anchor Walter Cronkite returned from a trip to Vietnam and gave a highly critical assessment of the war's progress. He said the United States should withdraw from the fighting "not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could."

As the first generation to grow up with television, the baby boomers placed a great deal of faith in Cronkite's words, and tensions surrounding the war, already high, escalated. 

Martin Luther King Jr., leader of the Civil Rights Movement, was assassinated on April 4, 1968. It was also a presidential campaign year, and incumbent president, Lyndon Johnson, chose not to run.  Popular Democratic primary candidate Robert Kennedy was assassinated on June 5. Movements for women's rights, black rights, worker rights, and anti-war activism converged in ways that would leave a lasting mark on society. Many people were left feeling that the world they knew was being overturned. Police turned on protesters at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 28 and beat some protesters unconscious, shocking the country. 

In 1968, an important piece of legislation was passed that addressed issues raised by the Civil Rights movement, the Fair Housing Act. No longer could people be denied housing or "steered" into certain neighborhoods on the basis of their race, sex, ethnicity, or religion. This was an important step forward in attempting to build an integrated society.

As a result of the assassinations of King and Kennedy, Congress passed the Gun Control Act of 1968, prohibiting mail order sales of guns and rifles and forbidding certain groups of people, such as felons and the mentally unstable, from purchasing guns. In 1968, the Bilingual Education Act was passed, providing federal money to innovate educate for students for whom English was a second language.

President Johnson expressed the negative views of many in government when he disparaged the war protesters. He saw the country in black and white terms, divided  "between cut-and-run people [anti-war protesters] and patriotic people." He said "They have a real feeling for danger. . . . They see a fire and they turn off the hose because it is essential that we not waste any water." Likewise, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI perceived many groups working for social change, such as the United Farm Workers, as "subversive." He monitored these organizations. Overall, the power elite was frightened and suspicious of the changes that bubbled up in 1968.

1968 remains one of the most turbulent years in American history. Tensions among all sorts of groups unhappy with the status quo—black, Mexicans, women, students, laborers, and more—all seemed to erupt simultaneously. Additionally, the Vietnam war was going badly for the United States, and major public figures were assassinated. There were uprisings in Europe, and there was police violence at the Democratic National Convention.